Digital Assets
Cosmos (ATOM) Readies for ‘Stargate’ Launch, Catches the Attention of Grayscale
Decentralized Finance is all the rage – enough so that institutional companies are taking notice. Grayscale, operator of the ‘Grayscale Bitcoin Trust’, has recently submitted multiple filings which would open the door for more products of this kind. These particular filings are noteworthy, as they primarily represent offerings which identify primarily as DeFi projects.
The most recent round of filings specifically addressed the following assets.
- Cosmos
- Polkadot
- Monero
- Aave
While it may be some time before Grayscale makes use of any approved filings, it appears determined to be ready to hit the ground running when it decides to enter the fray.
To date Grayscale has opened up Trusts in the following assets.
- Bitcoin
- Bitcoin Cash
- Ethereum
- Litecoin
- Stellar
- XRP
- zCash
Cosmos Stargate
With thousands of projects to choose from, why has Grayscale chosen the select few that it did? Cosmos for example has managed to rise within the ranks of digital assets since its launch. At the time of writing, Cosmos sits firmly as the 25th largest project tracked by CoinMarketcap. Perhaps the reason that Cosmos has been able to achieve this level of popularity –along with the attention of Grayscale- is on the backs of its development team. A prime example of its work, is the upcoming launch of ‘Stargate’.
Described as ‘The Internet of Blockchains’, Stargate is an initiative that is structured around the idea of interoperability. While Stargate is expected to offer various upgrades to blockchains within the Cosmos ecosystem, it is the ability to connect them all that is most intriguing.
Cosmos refers to this capability as ‘inter-blockchain communication (IBC)’. By bringing support for IBC, each of the public and private blockchains comprising the Cosmos ecosystem will be able to transfer not only value between one another, but data. The intended result is that Stargate will act as a hub, providing on/off ramps between an entire community of projects.
A few of the other upgrades to be expected with Stargate are as follows.
- Faster and cheaper through use of Protobuf (serialization standard)
- Expected to result in transaction through increase of 10-100x
- Full featured light clients
- Chain upgrade modules
While Stargate is expected to launch on February 18th, it will most likely be some time before Cosmos users implement the upgrade and IBC.
Decentralization has long been a calling card for blockchain projects, and various blockchain projects are quite decentralized within themselves. They however typically remain isolated from the larger sector. If all goes well, Stargate has the potential to bring decentralization to the industry as a whole.
To learn more about Cosmos, read our Investing in Cosmos Guide.
